Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
After Darkness, Light
I must immediately confess that I have gone back to a previous passage. I originally intended to proceed through the text without skipping to and fro. I must also confess that the topic discussed in this article has very little to do with the Narnia quote. In other words, because it is Reformation Day, I have essentially highjacked this Narnia series to discuss Reformation doctrine, which hopefully will not cause too much distress. The only semblance I can draw between the Reformation and the quote above is that just as Christmas followed winter in Narnia, light followed darkness in the Reformation. Post tenebras lux is the Latin phrase for this; after darkness came light. The obvious dissimilarity is that Lewis intended for Christmas in Narnia to symbolise the consequences of Christ’s earthly ministry. So, the connection of this article to the Narnia quote may be extremely tenuous, but as the New Zealand saying goes, “she’ll be right”.1 My goal in this article is twofold: to briefly discuss Reformation doctrine and secondly, what the Reformation can teach about our times.
Justification by faith alone (sola fide) is called the material cause of the Reformation. This language, which borrows Aristotelian categories, refers to how sola fide was the stuff at the heart of the Reformation. Just as marble is the material cause of a Renaissance statue because it is the stuff out of which that statue is made, sola fide was the stuff that constituted the Reformation. Without it, you had no Reformation. Martin Luther called sola fide the “chief article”.3 John Calvin declared that it was the “principal ground on which religion must be supported”.4 Moving to contemporary times, R. C. Sproul proclaimed that “[w]ithout the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the gospel is not merely compromised, it is lost altogether”.5 J. I. Packer wonderfully articulates that “to declare and defend God’s justification publicly as the only way of life for any man was at once an act of confessing their [the Reformers’] faith, of glorifying their God by proclaiming his wonderful work, and of urging others to approach him in penitent and hopeful trust just as they did themselves”.6 Scripture alone (sola scriptura) was the formal principle of the Reformation, giving shape and form to the Reformers’ arguments.
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